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Much like everyone else I usually finish a year/start a new one by reviewing the goals I set last year and establishing new goals (yes I know it’s already mid-january, but the it’s the thought that counts!).

Well, I didn’t quite make it… I decided to read new books instead, oh well…

HTML5 and Mobile

I did pass Microsoft’s HTML5 exam but contrary to my predictions, I didn’t have the chance to work with HTML5 nor Mobile technologies most of the year, what a shame. I really thought 2013 would be my HTML5 year.

Git

I’ve been using git for all my projects and also at work and, although I don’t understand all of its features, I’m making progress and I hope to see some progress in 2014.

XEO Community

I’ve released XALPI as an open-source project, so we can say that I at least did something!

Blog

This one went better than expected. I was able to write more blog posts than in 2012 and I hope to improve in 2014 as well

And now the (ambitious) goals to 2014

Revisit Object-Oriented Best Practices and Design Patterns

This one is basically the same as reading some old books again (like Code Complete, Clean Code, etc…). But I think that we (as developers), from time to time, need to go back to basics and re-evaluate what we think we know about OO Practices (because time and experience shapes our skills in a certain direction and sometimes it’s not the best one). This year I expect to do just that and read a lot about ways of creating object oriented systems and how to take advantage of objects.

HTML5 and Web Development

I’m much more of a back-end guy with some “hackish” front-end skills, which I would like to improve. I’ve been doing some experiments with CSS frameworks (namely Bootstrap) and reading about CSS (trying to learn the basics, really) including the usage of tools such as SASS and Compass which I hope to put to good use. I also need to have a deeper understanding of Javascript.

Security

Regarding WebDevelopment, there’s one area that I think that I particularly need to understand more and that is security. I know the basics of SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting but I strongly believe I need to know much more if I hope to defend my own applications against attacks. Which means I need to know enough about security to hack my own web applications, ironically 🙂

Another Paradigm

I’ve been toying with the ideia of learning a new language like Scala (because it’s JVM based which is close to my usual reality) because I think it will open new horizons (I’ve a friend who took the Coursera course on Scala and he talks wonders about it), but the time constraints may be to large during the year.

Blog

Again, I’ll try to commit to write more in this blog but with so much goals, we’ll see how that goes.

Akistmet protects you from spam, and it does a great job at it. It’s the first in the list because it really is so important. If not for Akismet I would literally have to go through dozens of comments and check their content (and I have a very small blog with a low number of visits), this saves me hours!
You’ll need to register with Akismet for an API Key to activate the plugin.

Since I’m running a technical blog, one of the things I need is a code highlighter. This plugin highlights the most common languages like C#, Java, XML, SQL, Javascript, Ruby Phyton, etc.. as well as less common ones ( e.g. Erlang ). It has its own settings page where you can choose a stylesheet such as Eclipse/Emacs, among other things.

You must have a social sharing plugin these days, right? This plugin allows to share to virtually every social network you can think of (you can configure which social networks are displayed in each post you make). I personally only use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Reddit. It’s easy to install, works well and it looks good.

I don’t usually post youtube videos, but when you need to do it, it becomes very handy. It has tons of options, but you basically just need to paste the youtube link and it will embed the video in the post, very nice!

This is one is here for security. Until I installed it, I had no idea about the amount of (automated) hacking going around these days. By default wordpress makes no attempt to limit login attempts which makes it a very nice friend to brute-force attacks. Even with a strong password, I feel much more secure by having it installed.

Well, if you want to track your visits and all, you’ll want a Google Analytics account, as such, you’ll need a plugin. Installing Google Analytics on your page is basically coping a few lines of javascript to the main template, but if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, use this plugin. You’ll need to register an API Key with Google first!

Well, I’m far from being an SEO Expert, but this plugin really gives a certain amount of information about each of your posts regarding search engine optimization which I find useful. It has TONS of settings, but in the end, it’s really useful by showing little green/yellow/red balls next to the items you choose like keywords, description, etc…

First day of the year, I thought I should try and write down some goals for 2012 🙂

First – Read, read, read

2011 was a nice year in terms of reading, I read some really great books, such as Effective Java (mandatory for anyone developing in Java) and ExtJS in Action. I also did some reading regarding the much popular JQuery framework with Learning JQuery Third edition and JQuery Mobile First Look and I’m currently reading Code Complete and Clean Code (both excelente so far).

For 2012 I hope to have the time to read more about programming in general in order to continue to improve my programming skills. I have some recommended books I want to read including classics such as the Pragmatic Programmer, Programming Pearls, Design Patterns (Elements of Reusable OOS),

Things to Learn – Git, Html5, Mobile, NoSQL, IOS

This year I would like to take a look at some of the things that were very hot in 2011, namely the Git source control mechanism (as I mostly use SVN) and check out if its a better tool than what I currently use.

I want to take a look at HTML5 (especially because of frameworks using HTML5 to create mobile apps such as JQuery Mobile) as we’re seeing browsers having greater support for it, yes, even IE :).

On another note, I think I want to see a NoSQL database in action to see what all the fuss is about :P. IOS programming has been in my agenda for some time but I haven’t been able to find the time to commit to it 🙁 I have some ideas for applications, need commit to this one.

XEO Community

I really hope to have more time to contribute to the community version of XEO. Maybe a set of mobile components? (which would be a way to force me to try out the JQuery Mobile framework). I have a project being done with XEO, I also hope to finish that 🙂